http://xkcd.com/456/

Mmm... I did this.

Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I 
mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few 
KB in size...

Oddly, X11 also takes forever.

(It's no surprise however that Firefox and OpenOffice are slow as hell. 
Oh, and KDE... *very* slow!)

Damn, I really don't know why the hell I did that...

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Invisible wrote:
> http://xkcd.com/456/

That's funny.  Been there.

> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I 
> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few 
> KB in size...

The wait is even more fun the second time around, after you realize you 
forgot to configure a necessary driver into your custom kernel. :D

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Kyle wrote:
> That's funny.  Been there.

"...I'm too late." ;-)

>> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? 
>> I mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a 
>> few KB in size...
> 
> The wait is even more fun the second time around, after you realize you 
> forgot to configure a necessary driver into your custom kernel. :D

I still don't entirely "get" why you would ever recompile the OS kernel. 
I mean, all it does is memory allocation, interrupt scheduling, etc. 
What's to change?

Also... Gentoo is the only Linux distro I've ever seen where compiling 
the kernel was actually successful. Every other distro managed to either 
spit cryptic error messages at me, or just leave me with a nonbootable 
system.

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Invisible wrote:
> http://xkcd.com/456/
> 
> Mmm... I did this.
> 
> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I
> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few
> KB in size...

Usually 8-10 minutes IME.

-Aero

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>> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I
>> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few
>> KB in size...
> 
> Usually 8-10 minutes IME.

Exactly. "Normal" programs take less than 4 *seconds* to compile! o_O

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Invisible wrote:
> (It's no surprise however that Firefox and OpenOffice are slow as hell.
> Oh, and KDE... *very* slow!)

Compiling all of KDE using GCC 3 == PAIN

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Invisible wrote:
>>> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I
>>> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few
>>> KB in size...
>>
>> Usually 8-10 minutes IME.
> 
> Exactly. "Normal" programs take less than 4 *seconds* to compile! o_O

#define normal_program;

It depends very much of the scale of the program. OpenOffice takes
couple of hours IIRC.

For comparison:
grunka linux # time emerge povray
-clip-
real    2m0.416s
user    1m15.329s
sys     0m40.495s

POV-Ray, as you surely know, "only" calculates images after all (Unix
version doesn't even have a GUI nor editor). Linux kernel inholds
drivers for most of the hardware you're using (possibly even all of
them), does memory allocating, process handling, networking,
firewalling, RAID-handling, even cryptographic thingies.

-Aero

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>> Exactly. "Normal" programs take less than 4 *seconds* to compile! o_O
> 
> #define normal_program;
> 
> It depends very much of the scale of the program.

Indeed yes.

Since even quite "large" programs take only a few seconds to compile, 
the Linux kernel must be *huge*...

> OpenOffice takes couple of hours IIRC.

...and OpenOffice must be absolutely gigantic. But then, it's a pretty 
complex bit of software, so you'd expect that. The Linux kernel's job 
seems quite a bit simpler by comparison.

> Linux kernel inholds
> drivers for most of the hardware you're using (possibly even all of
> them), does memory allocating, process handling, networking,
> firewalling, RAID-handling, even cryptographic thingies.

Ah yes, I'm forgetting: The Linux "kernel" isn't just the OS kernel. How 
silly of me...

(It probably contains drivers for every piece of hardware known to 
mankind, even if you don't need it. And I'll bet even if you disable 
those parts, it still has to process that part of the source code to 
decide whether or not to compile it...)

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Invisible wrote:
> Do you have *any idea* how long it takes to compile the Linux kernel? I
> mean, damn, how *big* is it?? I thought the final binary was only a few
> KB in size...

	8-10 minutes is not that long. I've been running Gentoo for over 5
years on the same machine, so I can tell you how long it took for any
package I've ever compiled via Portage.

GTK+ 2.x takes about 40 minutes
xulrunner (which is the bulk of the Firefox compile): 1 hour.
Thunderbird: 1.5 hours
gimp: 40 minutes
glibc: 1 hour
xorg-server: 25 minutes

> Oddly, X11 also takes forever.

	For me, other things take a longer forever.

> (It's no surprise however that Firefox and OpenOffice are slow as hell.
> Oh, and KDE... *very* slow!)

	KDE need not be slow if you only compile what you want. I stopped using
DE's years ago, so now I only have a few KDE apps installed that I use.


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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Invisible wrote:
> I still don't entirely "get" why you would ever recompile the OS kernel.
> I mean, all it does is memory allocation, interrupt scheduling, etc.
> What's to change?

	When I initially compiled the kernel after installing Gentoo, I had no
DVD drive, and was also short a lot of other hardware. So I turned those
options off. Later on, when I got certain hardware, I needed to enable
those options.

	Lately I've had to connect to work using a PPTP VPN (evil stuff). I
hadn't compiled PPTP support in the kernel. So: Recompile. Another time
I needed to use DAV. Not enabled in kernel - so I compiled.

	I don't do it often - probably 1-3 times a year.


-- 
If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
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                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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